Tales of History - A Civ-Builder Quest

A swamp seems really hard to expand from. It makes a lovely death trap, but yeah.

Duesal said:

A swamp seems really hard to expand from. It makes a lovely death trap, but yeah.

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It will require a quite different play-style then the plains or woodlands starting point, though it's not a complete negative.

A few things will be much harder to achieve, but the defensive bonus means you can pretty much kick back and watch the fireworks around you when the steppe nomads figure out riding, while everyone else will be in deep trouble. It's definitely a neat spot for turtling.

Kalrotix said:

Are their magic/fantasy éléments in this quest ?

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There will be supernatural elements, though if they are real or just superstition at work is for the readers to judge.

[X] [Leadership] The Matrons, who seek to find a place of plenty for their children.

[X] [Location] The remote plains. While the tribe is not adverse to sharing, it rightfully fears that others might envy their new home. It would be better to go to a more secluded location.

I like the focus on the Matrons, both because pop growth is super important and because it seems like a good balance between the rigid elders and the risk taking hunters.
Starting out more secluded will be good, both because it lets us grow and define ourselves in (relative) peace, and it should generally give us a head start in the region before someone else shows up and starts wanting stuff.

[x] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

I just read a 'matriarchy' civ quest, let's try something new here.

On a more pleasant note, I'm eager to see where this goes! PoC and it's successors were all blasts to read, but I'm eager to see how a more traditionally quest based format would handle the concept.

Vote tally

[x] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.
[x] [Location] The land of earth and water. Surely an arrangement can be made with the spirits of this strange place, which would grant the tribe a place both safe and fertile.

Swamp attrition ho

[X] [Leadership] The assembly had managed to work out their differences and they would seek a compromise.
[X] [Location] The remote plains. While the tribe is not adverse to sharing, it rightfully fears that others might envy their new home. It would be better to go to a more secluded location.

[X] [Leadership] The Matrons, who seek to find a place of plenty for their children.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

[X] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

An Azel civ building quest? Yesssss.....

Important question for the GM @Azel . How 'loose' are you going to play with SV's 'conventional historical wisdom'? In other words, how much sandbox are you willing to give us if we develop our Civ along non-historical routes? I'd hope that as long as internal Suspension of Disbelief is not wrecked, we could get away with quite some fun stuff. I'm thinking things like:

-Developing modes of government that 'should not work' according to conventional wisdom. For example, would we be able to develop a sort of proto communism and carry it on to the modern age without it turning inefficient and dystopic? (To be clear, I'm not interested in a debate centered around whether theoretical communism actually works in real life or not, just whether it would work in this world. Some posters (particularly Americans ) tend to go haywire when the possibility is presented, claiming it will not work and that the thread will commit civilization wide suicide if we go that way). It would be nice to know if we can design something along more speculative lines rather than having to retread the good ole Council of Elders -> Influential Council -> Proto Monarchy -> Feudal Monarchy -> Empire -> Constitutional Monarchy/Republic -> Modern Democracy.

-In terms of culture, would we have similar sandbox capabilities as well? Things like diverging radically from common trends of the era, like developing an acceptance of LGBT people in the Bronze age or something (Sorry for the heavily cliched example, only thing that comes to mind right this moment, life is busy).

I suppose the thrust of these questions is how much railroading will occur for one reason or the other. Though I think I've never commented on either Paths of Civilization or its sequel, I lurked for a while and was really put off by all the railroading there, especially given that the players were brimming with ideas (inspired players who cooperate in the worldbuilding with the GM are hard to come by and I was saddened by the remains of their whole effort basically going down the toilet with those timeskips). This neat tree worshiping communal empire turning into a generic, paternalistic, pseudo christian run of the mill monarchy of the 19th century was a real bummer.

Anyway, with that said, I'm really looking forward to this one. If all else fails we can go full imperialist and have a blast, we all know you love a bit of good ole' Imperium rofl:rofl:... though having you think up Azel like plots for our future enemies leaves me uneasy...

As is proper, I'll justify my votes:

[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

Has two items that will come in handy to any would-be proto-civilisation. Rivers for the sedentary life, and fertile lands for growing crops (the basis of everything else). I'm tempted to go for the sea access option for the tech and economic benefits, that would be a neat second option and am open to convincing.

Item two of course are those hills. Valleys and hills are sweet spots for starting civs, and having slopes and big trees makes us a more difficult target for horse raiders, the usual murderer of civilization of the eras to come. If we can turtle down there during the great migrations of horse raiders we could have a continuity of civilization comparable to Egypt, the lone survivors of the Bronze Age Collapse. Obviously a very nice thing to have as long as we don't stagnate.

[X] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.

Young people adapt to newer ways of thought easier than the elders. And right now, there's going to be a lot of social innovation as we go from nomad to sedentary lifestyle. This of course is kind of a stop gap until we decide on a more complicated government type. Still, I'm a bit wary of this one... the last thing I want is for it to evolve into a warrior led society. Militaristic playthroughs tend to be very boring and generic unless done right by both GM and players... it usually always ends in one of two: 1) Militaristic warrior culture that never invades other people. Bland, and often weak (compared to rival civs) because it does not often use its 'main stat' so to speak. 2) Turns capital E Stupid Evil and actually uses its militaristic culture to invade other places... without any sort of believable IC justification or really overall goal or dream. Often not enjoyable to read.

Good luck Azel, I have high hopes for this one!

bigbow said:

2) Turns capital E Stupid Evil and actually uses its militaristic culture to invade other places... without any sort of believable IC justification or really overall goal or dream. Often not enjoyable to read.

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@bigbow, we can always dream of world conquest and making an everlasting Empire to rule it all.

Imagine playing long enough to start invading alien civilizations as well.

Vote for the swamp, people, for at least some diversity!

Never found swamp interesting, to be honest.

[X] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

Sure, let's go with bold leaders and a sweet spot.

Duesal said:

@bigbow, we can always dream of world conquest and making an everlasting Empire to rule it all.

Imagine playing long enough to start invading alien civilizations as well.

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As long as we manage to make the resulting culture interesting, count me in. I think I've been burned by reading too many SV/SB militaristic quests that really... lack a soul for a lack of a better expression. Always chasing the latest military shiny and mostly being boring as fuck.

A warrior culture that praises fighting and spends turns obessively upgrading their military stuff and randomly defending or attacking nearby tribes until it expands beyond overextension or the questers get bored... ugh.

Trying to build a homogenizing, early roman empire which integrates conquered ethnicities to churn out even more admins, soldiers and leaders with costume civics/politics and mega project building? Count me the fuck in.

[X] [Leadership] The Hunters, who are willing to go to the unknown, hoping for great rewards.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

Great start

@bigbow:

- government:
Having 10,000 years of uninterrupted government of the same type with no problems or inefficiencies is by default not possible. That would require a insane amount of sheer dumb luck, since competence alone would never be able to avert every crisis. The more extreme your mode of government (Communism, Pure Market-Capitalism, Universal Democracy, Totalitarian Monarchy, Totalitarian Theocracy, etc.) the more likely it becomes that some problems will sneak in or a crisis develops that your government is ill equipped to deal with.

That being said, there will be no "right" governments that you inevitably have to default to. The list you gave is overly brief and narrow, glossing over a whole lot of historical governments. It doesn't mention the original Athenian Democracy, the centuries long Roman Republic, non-monolitic states like the Iroquois Confederation or the nigh-internal bureaucratic governments of the far east, of which the chinese one has survived in some form for millenia. It also doesn't account for the complex and distinct systems of the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish-Litunian Commonwealth and completely ignores the relationship between state and faith, like the Islamic Caliphate or the Inca Emperors.

There is nothing set in stone and the probability of average medieval monarchies dominating an average medieval world are pretty slim. That would require far too many events to play out exactly like in the real Europe to come to pass on that large a scale. Keep an eye out for a falling Rome and a strongly centralized faith willing to legitimise warlords for their own gain, otherwise expect something distinctly different to emerge.

- culture:
Likewise, culture isn't something that will default to anything and probably will be rather dynamic. To stick with your example, the ancient Greek and to a lesser degree the Romans had quite different views on homosexuality then those that the dominance of Abrahamic faiths would later establish. One should not conflate one view winning in the end with that view being normal.

- warrior culture and explosive expansion
Well, these things happened a lot in history. However, most of these states also didn't last much longer then the leader who had build them. The empire of Alexander the Great immediately went down the drain of civil-war after he died and the Mongol Empire rapidly dissolved within a few generations.

Having a warrior culture with nothing to back it up will have your conquests rapidly come apart at the seams.

So overall:
No railroads until the industrial revolution. Things will develop on their own and while some things are likely to happen, given the right conditions and enough time, there is no simple progression bar to track your way to the modern western world. Expect to fail and stumble on the way. Expect palaces to burn down, republics turning into dictatorships and faiths to cause world-wars over tiny pieces of scripture, but at no point will the direction of events be shaped by anything but the decisions and events that preceded them.

[X] [Leadership] The Matrons, who seek to find a place of plenty for their children.
[X] [Location] The hills among the great rivers. Hidden in between the great plants growing there, the tribe can prosper on the fertile lands in peace.

Peeking at the tally, a victor is emerging.

Vote still open for another 8 hours though, so it can still swing around again.